1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing, and, in particular, to compression and decompression of video data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many video compression algorithms employ a quantization stage where the video picture information is stored with reduced precision. The effect of the quantization is to add what is referred to as quantization noise to the reconstructed video. When quantization is part of a block transform-based video encoding scheme, the quantization noise often appears as undesirable blockiness in the decoded images.
The present invention is directed to a scheme for reducing the quantization noise effects associated with video encoding schemes that perform quantization.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the detailed description of a preferred embodiment which follows.